Moving

Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, nor believe to be beautiful. — William Morris

I have always prided myself on my application of this idea: people seem to think my houses beautiful, and I really think that, if they are, it is because I create my atmosphere entirely to please myself and no one else, really. But I have found, in life, that when I please myself first, others tend to be more pleased that if I had tried to please them. This is certainly true where my writing is concerned: I noticed, in college, that when I wrote a paper that I thought was what my professor wanted, it never was, and when I wrote to please myself, I invariably got a ‘A’.

Ah, but back to houses: houses, plural, you will notice. That’s the problem here, or rather, that is the opportunity. The blood of the gypsies runs in my veins. I have never been good at holding still, and as soon as I get used to a place or a room or a thing, I tend to grow bored with it, and long for change. My husband will tell you that we rearrange the living room, on average, every six weeks. We have lived all over the United States, including Alaska, which to me was like another country and still is, Sarah Palin notwithstanding; or, possibly, she herself is a good example of the peculiarity of living up there, where the nights can be long, the waters are clean and mavericks abound. (By the way, I am a hard-line liberal, and delighted with the latest election results!)

I have not done nearly as much traveling as I would have liked to, but I’ve done my share. Oddly, though, instead of just visiting a place I love, I tend to want to “own” it, i.e., to live there. There is such amazing beauty and variety even in this world that the absorption and appreciation of it is as much my meditation practice as is a mantra. As well, there is always a psychological side to one’s tendencies, and I am well aware that a great deal of my movement has been my need for a geographical cure, and when we went to Alaska to serve the mental health needs of a small village, I was entirely aware that the number of miles between it and my family-of-origin was a clear attempt to run far and fast in order to heal my various wounds.

But it gets old, this moving thing, and so do I. In my earlier years, I was very good and pulling everything together with a considerable amount of efficiency, getting a male friend with a truck to help me out, and GOING. After I married, I had a permanent male friend, although he does not have a truck, and he is getting old along with me. Through a series of events, we are still on the move, though, and while it is getting harder, we rather like it. We always have, and we always will, I suspect. My daughter, when she mentions the various places she has lived, often hears “are you an army brat?” No, she explains, it just happened that way. She likes travel and movement, too. We all like new houses, and my love of nest-building leads me to believe I should have become an interior decorator, so I wouldn’t have to keep changing and redecorating my own houses, for heaven’s sake!

I really think that, ultimately, the problem is that souls are meant, in this life, to journey, some of us more than others. I may well tend to take that a bit too literally, but I have come to believe that the reality is that there is no real home for me here on Planet Earth. Alaska, with its pristine beauty, came close, and various retreats I have made in astounding settings have also, and places where I’ve met people who would become important to me have often felt something like “home,” but I’m pretty sure HOME is not on this plane of existence, and so…I keep moving.

However, the thing is, as I move, I also collect, and this is where the growing conflict comes in. I have too much stuff! My friend Hayat commented that I have a great many things, but my house never looks cluttered. Well, she should look in my closets and drawers! And yet, I mostly like the things I’ve accumulated, and while I tend to despise them when I am packing them up yet again, I love them when I open the boxes and unpack them again: there are the aboriginal masks my daughter brought back from New Zealand. There are my Carl Larsson prints. Ah, my beautiful Buddhas, I want them near at all times, right next to the Blessed Virgin and Quan Yin. I love my quilts, and I love my Alaskan and Appalachian shamans… I am nothing, if not eclectic.

And, as Morris says, I try to have nothing in my house that I do not know to be useful, nor believe to be beautiful. In recent years, I have inherited–against my wishes, for the most part–my parents’ furnishings. So has my husband. This presents us with the opportunity for a challenging application of these ideas, because on the one hand, the lovely old secretary in which nooks and crannies I played as a child has much meaning for me, as does the lovely mahogany washstand. But other things bring back memories of pain, of rage, of narcissism and alcoholism (I still become nauseous at the smell of linens with my mother’s perfume, or of Jim Beam), and to have them around is to continue to hear the stories I assigned to them.

I am trying to let go of stories these days, because it is not the event, or the object, or the smell that I find upsetting, it’s the story attached to it; and often, the stories have stories, because I am the one who assigned whatever story there is that comes back to me when I see that a certain piece of silver or “Aunt Lizzie’s Cocoa set,” and I find that when I relinquish the story, I can appreciate whatever phenomena that presents itself with a greater appreciation and tolerance. But at the moment, using space constraints as an excuse, I am giving myself permission to only unpack and display what I truly love, what is of me or my loved ones, the ones who live here with me. In this way, our home is a reflection of the harmony and joy in which we live, what I finally found in my life with these dear people. Our home is a creation of that, and wherever it is, we love that, and we love it. If life is a continual journey, home is as much an eternal reality as is its movement.

Harnessing the Energies of Love

Some day, after we have mastered the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love. Then for the second time in the history of the world, we will have discovered fire.
― Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

The Resurrection

The resurrection is a description of how the universe self-corrects, life always reasserting itself even when forces of death and darkness have temporarily prevailed. Like a tiny flower growing through cracks in broken cement, peace of mind emerging at last after periods of deep grief, or people continuing to fall in love despite the ravages of war, love always gets the final say. To lean on the resurrection is simply to recognize what’s true; that if happiness hasn’t arrived yet, then the story isn’t over.

Marianne Williamson, The Alchemy of Easter

Listening to the Muse

Just as anyone who listens to the muse will hear, you can write out of your own intention or out of inspiration. There is such a thing. It comes up and talks. And those who have heard deeply the rhythms and hymns of the gods, the words of the gods, can recite those hymns in such a way that the gods will be attracted. -- Joseph Campbell, The Hero's Journey, p.124

The Children of Sorrow…

Into this world, this demented inn, in which there is absolutely no room for him at all, Christ has come uninvited. But because he cannot be at home in it, because he is out of place in it, and yet he must be in it, his place is with those others for whom there is no room. His place is with those who do not belong, who are rejected by power because they are regarded as weak, those who are discredited, who are denied the status of persons, tortured, exterminated. With those for whom there is no room, Christ is present in this world. - Thomas Merton

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The dead let go, floating out of their graves, dressed for a wedding. - Charlie Hopkins

Necessary Loneliness

"Therefore, dear Sir, love your solitude and try to sing out with the pain it causes you. For those who are near you are far away... and this shows that the space around you is beginning to grow vast.... be happy about your growth, in which of course you can't take anyone with you, and be gentle with those who stay behind; be confident and calm in front of them and don't torment them with your doubts and don't frighten them with your faith or joy, which they wouldn't be able to comprehend. Seek out some simple and true feeling of what you have in common with them, which doesn't necessarily have to alter when you yourself change again and again; when you see them, love life in a form that is not your own and be indulgent toward those who are growing old, who are afraid of the aloneness that you trust.... and don't expect any understanding; but believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it."
— Rainer Maria Rilke (Letters to a Young Poet)

Setting the World on Fire

"In the absence of a higher ideal the constant striving after material inventions has led man to such devices as have set the world on fire." --Inayat Khan

Also There

All things
are too small
to hold me,
I am so vast

In the Infinite
I reach
for the Uncreated

I have
touched it,
it undoes me
wider than wide

Everything else
is too narrow

You know this well,
you who are also there
–Hadewijch (13th Century)

About the Rays

If you have visited this blog before and are confused that not only has the domain name changed, so has the title, you know that it was called "Footprints" after the Zen Oxherding poems for quite awhile. The poems are still here (see above).
As to the new title, a long time ago, one of the students of Hazrat (Saint) Inayat Khan, named Kismet Stam, published a book with exactly the same title I have decided to use here. It was a beautiful book and has long been out of print, which is why I feel comfortable using it, and why it is meant as a sort of tribute: Rays, pages in the life of a Sufi. To the Sufi, each of us is a ray of light shooting out from the central Sun that is God. This is the expression of this ray.

Crowned with the Stars

"You never enjoy the world aright, till the Sea itself flows in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens, and crowned with the stars: and perceive yourself to be the sole heir of the whole world, and more than so, because men are in it who are every one sole heirs as well as you." --Thomas Traherne

SIX

The valley spirit never dies;
It is the woman, primal mother.
Her gateway is the root of heaven and earth.
It is like a veil barely seen.
Use it; it will never fail. - Tao te Ching

DWELLING

I have nothing in my home that I do not find to be useful nor know to be beautiful. --William Morris

The True Invincibles

When I despair, I remember that all through history, the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time they seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. --Gandhi

My Father and Best Friend: Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan

Hazrat Pir-O-Murshid Inayat Khan

By my dear friend Gregory Blann

Who does the typing?

I've been a student of the Sufi teacher Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan for over 35 years. I have been his representative and an instructor of meditation and comparative religion during much of that time. I guide people seeking a contemplative path, in both individual meditative practice and alchemical retreats.
I am a psychotherapist and a teacher of psychology, focusing on the cllinical, depth and transpersonal theories of psychology. I have a Master's Degree in Existential Phenomenology and am "ABD" for my Ph.D. in Transpersonal Psychology. I am currently open to working with clients under the appropriate circumstances. Email me if you think we could work together in a collaborative fashion. I'll do what I can to help you go where you want to go.

God is in the Machine

With gratitude to the succession of my many and dearly-loved Macs through the years. Writers like to thank pivotal people in their lives who inspired them and helped them to become who they are. I have a long list of those too, but it was the Macintosh computer that set me free: it thinks as fast as I do, it thinks LIKE I do, and it has Soul. And I can listen to Krishna Das while I work on my writing, edit photographs or do creative work. I don’t do Windows. http://www.apple.com/

The Origin of the Footprints

I am following a Sufi path, in the International Sufi Order of Pir-o-Murshid Hazrat Inayat Khan. You will notice many quotes from his writings here, and from those of his successor and my own Pir (teacher), Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan. The most important thing that Sufism has given me has been complete spiritual freedom, which is why you will read many other quotes here, and my explorations of other paths, other philosophies. The Sufi, Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan said, has two points of view: his own, and that of the other. It is my inherent conviction that, as all rivers lead to the sea, all paths lead to the one goal most sacred to the heart. In our Sufi Order, we call this the Message: “the Message is a call to Awakening for all those meant to awaken, and a lullabye for those who are still meant to sleep.” –Inayat Khan

Of course, he himself would say that we are all awake, just as we are all, in different degrees, partially asleep! But each condition is temporary and meaningful: “I have come here not to teach you that which you do not know, but to awaken in you that which has always been your knowledge.” –Inayat Khan